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  • Letter
  • Open Access

Influence of particle softness on active glassy dynamics

Vincent E. Debets and Liesbeth M. C. Janssen*

  • Department of Applied Physics, Eindhoven University of Technology, P.O. Box 513, 5600 MB Eindhoven, The Netherlands and Institute for Complex Molecular Systems, Eindhoven University of Technology, P.O. Box 513, 5600 MB Eindhoven, The Netherlands

  • *l.m.c.janssen@tue.nl
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Phys. Rev. Research 4, L042033 – Published 22 November, 2022

DOI: https://doi.org/10.1103/PhysRevResearch.4.L042033

Abstract

Active matter studies are increasingly geared towards the high-density or glassy limit. This is mainly inspired by the remarkable resemblance between active glassy materials and conventional passive glassy matter. Interestingly, within this limit it has recently been shown that the relaxation dynamics of active quasihard spheres is nonmonotonic and most enhanced by activity when the intrinsic active length scale (e.g., the persistence length) is equal to the cage length, i.e., the length scale of local particle caging. This optimal enhancement effect is claimed to result from the most efficient scanning of local particle cages. Here we demonstrate that this effect and its physical explanation are fully retained for softer active spheres. We perform extensive simulations of athermal active Brownian particles (ABPs) and show that the nonmonotonic change of the relaxation dynamics remains qualitatively similar for varying softness. We explain quantitative differences by relating them to the longer range of the softer interaction potential, which decreases the cage length and obscures the intrinsic active motion. Moreover, we observe that only when the persistence length surpasses the cage length, distinct qualitative changes with respect to an equivalent passive Brownian particle system start to manifest themselves. Overall, our results further strengthen the importance of the cage length and its relation to the relevant active length scale in the context of active glassy materials.

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Phys. Rev. Research 4, L042033– Published 22 November, 2022
  • Received 5 September 2022
  • Accepted 20 October 2022
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Published by the American Physical Society under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International license. Further distribution of this work must maintain attribution to the author(s) and the published article's title, journal citation, and DOI.

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